The German IT Planning Council set out its priorities for 2017 at its 22nd meeting, held on the fringes of the CeBIT exhibition in Hanover. The council is chaired this year by the federal state of Brandenburg, represented by home and municipal affairs minister Katrin Lange. Its main goals are making public administration more open and transparent, and simplifying electronic access to e-government services.

The national and regional governments agreed at the meeting to coordinate e-government portals so that they connect with one another and users can fulfil their needs through a few clicks. This will be enhanced by a new digitisation programme led by the federal government and by Bavaria.

This scheme aims to make it feasible to deal with as many services as possible by electronic means in future. At least three areas should be made accessible by 2018, ready for extension nationwide. Areas identified include residential registration, parental pay, vehicle registration, business registration and online invoices.

The meeting looked at ways that regional states and borough councils can be actively involved in national plans for the Open Government Partnership, begun in December 2016. Participants discussed improvements to standardisation plans, bringing in formal 'pilot' and 'testing' designations where standards are not yet mature.

The IT Planning Council will now adopt two coordination projects permanently. One is the OSIP online security check for personal security and reliability for every administrative level, including business. The other is the Secured Access to Federated eJustice / eGovernment (SAFE) system used by all state legal systems for the authentication and authorisation of electronic identities for logging in to e-justice and e-government applications.